Qantas recently suffered a major mishap when a coding error on the airline’s website resulted in first class tickets being sold at a steep discount.

In a single day, about 300 passengers booked round-trip flights between Australia and the United States at up to 85 percent off regular airfares, which normally cost more than $18,000 (AU$20,000).

The discounted prices were only available for about eight hours before the bug was fixed.

Qantas has announced that these discounted first class tickets will no longer be granted and affected passengers will instead be rebooked into business class at no additional cost.

Alternatively, passengers can choose a full refund.

Despite this adjustment, business class tickets remain around 65 percent cheaper than usual.

Qantas’s action is based on the airline’s terms and conditions, which allow it to cancel bookings with “fairly obvious” pricing errors.

The airline has stated that this situation falls into such a category, which has led to the decision to offer seats in Business Class instead of First Class.

This is not the first time that airlines have been embarrassed by incorrectly priced tickets.

Similar incidents have occurred at other airlines, such as Cathay Pacific, which offered significantly discounted business class tickets in 2019, and British Airways, which cancelled tickets sold for £1 in 2018 due to a glitch.

Qantas’ mistake came amid a recent review of the airline, which was heavily fined earlier this year for selling tickets for flights that had already been cancelled.

You can find more information about the Qantas fare fiasco here.